Films about men falling in love with other-worldly creatures have long been a staple of movies as they were in mythology going back to the Greeks.

We’ve had films about men falling in love with angels (I Married an Angel; witches (I Married a Witch; statues One Touch of Venus and more recently, blow-up dolls (Lars and the Real Girl. Now it’s an operating system in Spike Jonze’s Her.

In I Married an Angel the angel was an angel in Nelson Eddy’s dreams and a real woman in real life, both of whom were played by Jeanette MacDonald. In I Married a Witch, Veronica Lake is a vengeful witch who accidentally casts a love spell on herself and falls in love with the husband she set out to menace (Fredric March). The film inspired the long-running TV series, Bewitched.

In One Touch of Venus and its modern day counterpart Mannequin, the statues come to life in the forms of Ava Gardner and Kim Cattrall to the delight of Robert Walker and Andrew McCarthy. In the more realistic Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling’s love for his inanimate object has a conventional ending in which the human touch puts an end to his loneliness.

Her will have none of that, although the ending in which Joaquin Phoenix sits quietly with neighbor Amy Adams may be a harbinger of things to come. In the meantime we get a remarkable story to savor in which professional letter writer Phoenix slowly, but surely falls in love with his new operating system and the operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) with him. Slowly, the shy, sensitive guy comes out of his shell, even going on a double date with a friend and his girl and “Samantha”, the operating system in which she proves to be the most articulate of the group. The film achieves greatness in its later scenes when Phoenix’s character goes through shock, jealousy and finally acceptance in light of Samantha’s admission that he isn’t the only one she loves.

Critics have praised the performances of Rooney Mara as Phoenix’s soon to be ex-wife and Olivia Wilde as a sex surrogate for Samantha but I found the characters superfluous. The best acting was done by Phoenix; Adams and in voice work by Johansson and Brian Cox in a brief but important impersonation of an operating system cloned from a now deceased brilliant scientist.

Is this the way of the future, or is the future already here? This and many other questions about the way we live and love in today’s world are fodder for debate in Jonze’s very wise film, a deserved Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay.

Her is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

One of four films dealing with racial prejudice in 1949, Mark Robson’s Home of the Brave was the first to be released, preceding Alfred L. Werker’s Lost Boundaries; Clarence Brown’s Intruder in the Dust and Elia Kazan’s Pinky.

The story of a black soldier’s problems while on a dangerous World War II reconnaissance mission with four white soldiers had been about a Jewish soldier in Arthur Laurents’ 1946 play, but producer Stanley Kramer felt that the cycle of films about anti-Semitism had passed. Ironically Edward Dymtryk’s 1947 Oscar nominee, Crossfire about the anti-Semitic murder of a Jewish soldier didn’t start out that way either. It had been based on future director Richard Brooks’ 1945 novel The Brick Foxhole about the murder of a gay soldier, a no-no under the strict production code of the day.

Home of the Brave is told in flashbacks as soldier James Edwards recounts the events of the harrowing mission interspersed with flashbacks of his civilian life. Edwards was the young black actor credited with breaking the stereotype of the black man in films perpetrated by Stepin Fetchit and others, years before the emergence of Sidney Poitier. He was equally outstanding in the simultaneously released The Set-Up in support of Robert Ryan. Here his co-stars are Lloyd Bridges; Douglas Dick; Frank Lovejoy; Steve Brodie and Jeff Corey as the psychiatrist.

Home of the Brave is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Just as old movies can shed a light on the times in which they were made, so can old TV shows. A case in point is the recent release of two medical series from the Warner Archive.

The hugely successful Dr. Kildare series ran from 1961-1966, made a star of Richard Chamberlain and introduced Raymond Massey to a whole new legion of fans. Based on the popular MGM film series of the late 1930s and early 1940s that starred Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore, the series broke no new ground but provided thought-provoking episodes on everything from alcoholism to smallpox epidemics to cancer to paralysis to malnutrition to plastic surgery with plenty of room for family problems, mental problems, doctor rivalries and feuds and more.

The equally successful Medical Center ran from 1969-1976 and while the show premiered just three years after Dr. Kildare went off the air, the series starring Chad Everett and James Daly seemed light-years ahead in its ability to cover subjects that Kildare couldn’t touch in a more restrictive era. In addition to the subjects covered by Kildare, Medical Center in its early years covered such hot button issues as homophobia; heart transplants; child abuse; vasectomies and abortions, devoting at least three episodes in the first couple of seasons to the latter.

The two series available from Dr. Kildare represent the first two seasons of 31 episodes each for a total of 62 hour long episodes. The series available from Medical Center represent the first four seasons of which there were 26 in the first seasons and 24 each in the subsequent three seasons for a total of 98 hour long episodes.

Guest stars in the first two seasons of Dr. Kildare include at least thirty previous and future Oscar nominees and winners: Mickey Rooney; Larry Parks; Dan O’Herlihy; Lee Marvin; Robert Redford; Gloria Swanson; Joseph Schildkraut; Charles Bickford; Dean Jagger; Theodore Bikel; Peter Falk; Ed Begley; Martin Balsam; John Cassavetes; George Kennedy; Jack Albertson; Fay Bainter; Mary Astor; Margaret O’Brien; Claire Trevor; Jean Hagen; Eileen Heckart; Dorothy Malone; Carolyn Jones; Mary Badham; Peggy Wood; Beatrice Straight; Barbara Barrie; Joan Hackett and Olympia Dukakis. It also provides for memorable appearances by Beverly Garland; Suzanne Pleshette; Anne Francis; Cathleen Nesbitt; William Shatner; Jean Stapleton; Richard Kiley; Joseph Cotten; Dina Merrill; Pat Hingle; Otto Kruger; Jack Carter; Harry Guardino; Steven Hill; Ed Asner; Betty Field; Tom Tryon; James Franciscus; Robert Culp; Polly Bergen; Brian Keith; Leonard Nimoy; Lois Smith and more.

Guest stars in the first four seasons of Medical Center include at least twenty-one former and future Oscar nominees and winners: Walter Pidgeon; Michael Douglas; Geraldine Page; Kim Stanley; Carrie Snodgress; Cicely Tyson; Gena Rowlands; Dean Jagger (the only one to appear in both series); Jack Kruschen; George Chakiris; John Marley; Celeste Holm; Mercedes McCambridge; Lee Grant; Kim Hunter; Jan Sterling; Jo Van Fleet; Estelle Parsons; Lynn Carlin; Kay Medford; and Dyan Cannon. It also provides for memorable appearances by O.J. Simpson; Lois Nettleton; Barbara Rush; France Nuyen; Michael Brandon; John Ericsson; Michael Burns; Viveca Lindfors; James Shigeta; Inga Swenson; Tyne Daly; Richard Thomas; Bruce Davison; Martin Sheen; Wendell Burton; Carol Lawrence; William Windom; Jessica Walter; Barry Sullivan; Bradford Dillman; David Wayne; Earl Holliman; Tom Ligon; Susan Strasberg; George Maharis; Diana Sands; Vera Miles; Sheree North; Joyce Van Patten; Ida Lupino; Howard Duff; James Stacy; Nancy Walker; Ken Howard; Bill Bixley; Tom Bosley; Will Geer; Michael Andcerson, Jr.; Robert F. Lyons; Steve Forrest; Dana Wynter; Diane Baker; Roddy McDowall; Stephanie Powers; Pamela Franklin; Peter Strauss; John Ritter; Larry Hagman; Barbara Feldon; Michael Parks and Jim Backus.

Kildare guest stars from the first two years who also guested on Medical Center in its first four years include Ed Asner; Pat Hingle; Forrest Tucker; William Shatner; Richard Kiley; Diana Hyland; Harry Guardino and Suzanne Pleshette.

This week’s new releases include The Monuments Men and In Secret.